There's several reasons why the 2023 counter offensive failed.

Number 1. Is because Ukraine lacked air support to defend the boots on the ground.
Number 2. Is because the help you got from the USA also included them making the war plans for you from Ramstein, and once they gathered all the men and equipment (which were inadequately trained for combined arms warfare) they send you in without adequate air support, and did not stop the counteroffensive when it was clear within the first week you wouldn't achieve the objectives
Number 3. Is because the West advertised your war plans to the Russians and gave them time to prepare a defense that would neutralise your attempt.

I'm not saying it to be mean Yuri.
I support Russia, but I am truly sorry for what's happened to your country.
I blame the West for their policy of sanctions and overthrows.
For Boris Johnson convincing you to exit negotiations in April 2022 and to take up arms against Russia and that they would support you 'as long as it takes'.
For the U.S. those promises had limits.
They don't want to waste the weapons and ammunition on you, they made Ukraine Europe's problem, because they're looking at the bigger picture, i.e 'War with China', because the Wests real aims are to maintain global primacy, and defend the Unipolar world order where America makes the rules against the multipolar world order.

Wolfowitz Doctrine
The Wolfowitz Doctrine, articulated in a 1992 document, outlines the United States' aspirations to maintain its superpower status following the Cold War. Central to this doctrine is the PREVENTION OF ANY RIVAL POWERS EMERGING and establishing dominance over critical regions, particularly in Eurasia. It emphasizes U.S. leadership in promoting global stability and reaffirms strategic interests, particularly regarding oil in the Middle East and the security of Israel, while also reflecting a shift toward a diplomatic approach concerning relations with Russia and former Soviet states.

* PREVENTION OF ANY RIVAL POWERS EMERGING

This war was never even about Ukraine.
It was about using you as a battering ram to harm Russia.

Just came across this thread on X in my feed, good timing.

Bucha Unmasked: A Web of Doubt
http://x.com/TaranQ/status/1907188399716647405

I didn't really go through the content, readers can look and judge for themselves - but I was looking for something specific...
I scrolled down, and down and down some more till I actually found what I was hoping to find, in this response comment:

http://x.com/marc__adler/status/1907456940688412841
'Safari'

http://en.lb.ua/news/2022/04/02/12441_special_forces_regiment_safari.html

>>Special forces have begun a clearing operation in the city of Bucha in the Kyiv region, which has been liberated by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The city is being cleared from saboteurs and accomplices of Russian forces.

This has been reported by the National Police.

“At the moment, the combatants of the organised special forces regiment of the National Police, Safari, which includes the representatives of subdivisions of the Special Tasks Police, the Rapid Operational Response Unit, the Tactical Operational Response Police, and explosive ordnance disposal experts, is working in the city,” the office reports.<<

What does the word 'Safari' mean?
It means exactly what it is, i.e. 'Safari Hunt'.
What do you think 'cleared from saboteurs and accomplices of Russian forces' means...

Yes, a timely reminder, AC ... the third anniversary of the Bucha massacre is indeed an ideal opportunity for any fellow truth seekers out there to read and reflect on the truth of what occurred ...

“Lies, truth, and forensics in Ukraine.” The case of Bucha. - April 2022
https://thefloutist.substack.com/p/lies-truth-and-forensics-in-ukraine

Remember the Maine: The Alleged Russian Atrocity at Bucha Looks Like Another in a Long Line of False Pretexts for War - May 2022
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/05/13/remember-the-maine-the-alleged-russian-atrocity-at-bucha-looks-like-another-in-a-long-line-of-false-pretexts-for-war

What really happened in Bucha? The questions Western media won’t ask - April 2025
https://www.rt.com/russia/614967-what-really-happened-in-bucha

Statement by First Deputy Permanent Representative Dmitry Polyanskiy at a UNSC Arria-Formula Meeting on Disinformation and Sabotage of Peace in Ukraine - April 2025
https://russiaun.ru/en/news/arria_02042025

Understanding the roots of Russian hatred and dehumanization of Ukrainians is not merely an intellectual exercise—it is essential to grasping the core causes of Russia’s genocidal war against Ukraine. This war did not begin in 2022, nor in 2014, nor even in the Soviet era. It is the outgrowth of centuries of imperial domination and a pathological refusal to allow Ukraine—and others like it—to exist on its own terms.

Russian soldiers who occupy Ukrainian towns and villages often come not from Moscow or St. Petersburg, but from Buryatia, Dagestan, Bashkortostan, Chechnya—regions on the fringes of the so-called Russian Federation. These are not “Russians” in any meaningful ethnic or cultural sense. They are the forcibly assimilated peoples of a broken empire that survives by devouring the identities of those it colonizes. Russia is not a nation; it is an empire masquerading as one, and it has never figured out how to be anything else.
This is the key to understanding the strange structure of Russian identity. In a healthy nation-state, diversity becomes strength through synthesis—a melting pot in which languages, cultures, and traditions interact to form something greater. But the Russian imperial model is no melting pot. It is a grinder. It demands that constituent peoples forget who they are, erase their languages, abandon their heritage, and become “Russians”—not as an inclusive civic identity, but as a hollow, imperial label. This is not integration. It is enforced amnesia.

The Soviet Union perfected this system. The “Soviet person” was not a proud citizen of a diverse and egalitarian republic; he was a nameless, cultureless, obedient unit of production and control. The USSR’s collapse did not change this mindset. The so-called “Russian Federation” merely inherited the bones of empire and continued the project: a state that cannot exist without erasing others.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Russia’s relationship with Ukraine.

Despite centuries of Russian domination—Tsarist censorship, Soviet famines, cultural repression, deportations, and political assassinations—Ukrainians persisted. More than that, they built a nation. A real one.

2/ A nation with a sense of shared identity that arises from memory, language, culture, religion, and civic life. A nation that produces new political elites, challenges them, replaces them, and grows. A nation with a living memory of suffering and survival—and a clear vision of freedom.
This is what Russia hates. Ukraine is the mirror that exposes Russia’s failure. Ukraine is the Slavic nation that succeeded where Russia failed: it built something real, bottom-up, resilient, and self-critical. In contrast, the “Russian nation” remains barely coherent, held together by propaganda, fear, and myth. And so, instead of reckoning with its own hollowness, the Russian regime and its ideologues must destroy the mirror. Ukraine must be crushed—not for threatening Russia militarily, but for threatening its imperial mythos.

That is why Russian rhetoric is so hysterical. Kremlin ideologues scramble for grand metaphors—Russia as “civilization,” Russia as “Third Rome,” Russia as the last bastion against Western decadence. They speak of “spiritual bonds,” “eternal Russia,” and “anti-Nazism,” but all these slogans are designed to conceal the gaping void at the heart of their identity: there is no Russian nation. There is only the empire. And empire demands conquest or collapse.

To the imperial mind, Ukrainians are doubly intolerable. First, they are traitors—they refuse to disappear into the Russian identity. Second, they are rivals—proof that another Eastern Slavic nation can thrive without empire. That is why Russia must erase Ukraine: not merely to regain territory, but to deny an existential threat. Ukraine is the living alternative to Russian imperialism.

This logic is genocidal. It is not merely comparable to Nazism—it is a sibling to it. The Nazi regime feared the Jews not only as “the Other” but as a reflection of what Germany might be without fascism: cosmopolitan, intellectual, ethically rooted. Similarly, Russia fears Ukrainians not because they are foreign, but because they are familiar—too familiar. Ukrainians are “like us,” but they chose to be different. They chose democracy, identity, and freedom. That is unforgivable.

3/
And so, in Russia’s eyes, Ukrainians must not only be defeated—they must be annihilated, humiliated, and erased. This is why Russian media speaks of “de-Ukrainization.” This is why Russian missiles target maternity hospitals, churches, and museums. This is why the very word “Ukraine” must be wiped off the map. Not for security, but for identity.
This is not a war for land. This is a war for the right to exist outside the shadow of a failed empire.
The truth is simple: Ukraine is a nation. Russia is not. And in that truth lies both the reason for Russia’s hatred—and Ukraine’s victory.